The Canon / Pillars / Success & Self-Help
Pillars · 1859
Self-Help
Self-Help / Victorian Self-ImprovementSelf-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct is Samuel Smiles's Victorian argument that lasting betterment comes chiefly through individual character rather than legislation. Its central claim is that perseverance, thrift, and steady effort—not birth or fortune—are the true sources of advancement, and that a person's habits and disposition shape their outward circumstances.
The method is biographical exemplification. Assembled in part from lectures to young working men, the book illustrates its precepts with the life-stories of inventors, industrialists, and self-made figures, holding them up as models of the diligence and self-discipline readers are urged to adopt. It stresses the cumulative power of small, repeated efforts.
An enormous bestseller, the work gave the self-improvement genre its name and enduring template. Its thesis that inner character governs outer life passed directly into the later success and mind-power literature.
In its words
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength.
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me’. Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central! Maybe life is not about the self but about self-transcendence.
When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. That keeps me working on my integrity. And the thing about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.
Practices it teaches
Subliminal Audio / Subliminal Affirmations
Subliminal audio products are recordings — typically affirmations like "I am confident," "money flows to me," "I am calm" — that are mixed below the threshold of conscious hearing: buried under music, ocean sounds…
The Candle / Intention Ritual
A candle intention ritual is a simple ceremony in which you light a candle to mark, focus and declare an intention — a goal, a release, a wish, a dedication.
The Vision Board
A vision board is a visual collage of one's goals and desired future — images, words, and symbols representing the relationships, work, possessions, experiences or states a person wants — assembled on a board (or…
The Bridging Sequence (Nine Gamut Procedure) — Feinstein's eye-movement / hum / count brain-balancer
The Bridging Sequence is the curious middle step David Feinstein teaches inside his tapping protocol in the Energy Psychology Interactive Self-Help Guide (2003).
The Three Thumps & Three Navel Touch — Feinstein's 90-second 'energetic receptiveness' primer
This is the short opening ritual David Feinstein teaches in his Energy Psychology Interactive Self-Help Guide (2003) to run before working on a psychological issue — what he calls "Establishing an Energetic…
Shapiro's Safe/Calm Place — self-anchored refuge with cue word and self-tapping
Francine Shapiro — developer of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) — turned the therapy's "Preparation phase" self-control tools into lay self-help in Getting Past Your Past (2012).
Shapiro's Spiral Technique — reversing the 'spin' of a body sensation
The Spiral Technique is a brief self-control exercise Francine Shapiro, originator of EMDR, offers in Getting Past Your Past (2012, p. 108) and in EMDR's Phase 2 stress-management repertoire.
Shapiro's Floatback & Touchstone — tracing a present trigger to its earliest root
In Getting Past Your Past (2012), Francine Shapiro — originator of EMDR — teaches lay readers a piece of EMDR's case-conceptualisation: how to find the "touchstone" memory behind a present-day overreaction.
Shapiro's Lightstream Technique — dissolving a body sensation with healing light
The Lightstream Technique is one of the stress-reduction tools Francine Shapiro, originator of EMDR, presents for self-help in Getting Past Your Past (2012); in clinical EMDR it is a Phase 2 / closure exercise for…
Heaven Rushing In — Feinstein's standing 'half prayer, half energy work' radiant-circuit gesture
In Section III of his Energy Psychology Interactive Self-Help Guide (2003), "Uplifting Your Mood," David Feinstein teaches a handful of moves for stimulating what Donna Eden's energy medicine calls the "radiant…
Lineage
The author
Samuel SmilesCharacter and perseverance as the engine of betterment
Full voice →
Kindred books